I'm your host, Jester. I've been an EVE Online player for about six years. One of my four mains is Ripard Teg, pictured at left. Sadly, I've succumbed to "bittervet" disease, but I'm wandering the New Eden landscape (and from time to time, the MMO landscape) in search of a cure.You can follow along, if you want...

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Fleet Tempest in a teapot

Just a quickie.

A lot of people have been asking me breathlessly over the last week or so if there was going to be a war, was I excited about the war, what was causing the war, and what did I think the outcome of the war was going to be.

And my answers over the last week have been "no", "no", "temporary brain damage", and "there's not going to be a war." Amusingly, the most common response to my saying "there's not going to be a war" was "damn it!" People out there right across New Eden really want to see the Clusterfuck Coalition and the HoneyBadger Coalition tear each other to shreds. It ain't gonna happen. Both sides have every reason to maintain the status quo, and this morning, I learn that even the most dramatic and temporarily brain damaged person involved now realizes it.

"Crisis" resolved. Heh. This was the biggest crisis in EVE Online since that guy with the thing did the thing.

To me, the best part of the "crisis" was this post by The Mittani, which I encourage you in the strongest possible terms to take some time out of your day today to read (if you haven't already). It's incredibly worth your time. The text itself is typical Mittens professor mode, explaining most of the background behind the "crisis", why the Goons were the wronged party, and why the reasons for the conflict make no sense. Why oh why oh why, Mittens asks, would Montolio wish to start an unnecessary conflict with Goonswarm?

Goons as victims. I'll give you a second to contemplate the irony of that.

Anyway, sov wars don't happen for economic reasons, Mittens told CCP again and again when he was on the CSM, but rather for reasons of rage and hatred. Uh huh. Most of the time, I don't buy it. But even if you do think that, and wars are started for reasons of rage and hatred, the rage and hatred can be cooled by apathy (edited slightly):

(12:22:29 AM) montolio@pleaseignore.com: The HBC wants a war (7:24:13 PM) shadoo@pandemic.pleaseignore.com: this is not true

But then, Montolio was talked down. As he put it in his message to his troops:

[A negotiated settlement] isn't what I want, but it is what you want. I want war. I want gigantic fucking battles. I want to crash nodes because people are so fucking interested in this shitty game.

Shadoo has promised to give me what I want without the nastyness of sov grinds.

That's from the first post I linked up there, the "crisis averted" post. Go ahead and read that one too, because Shadoo apparently manages to single-handedly prevent a massive coalition on coalition war... mostly because taking sov is painful and dull and un-fun.

Don't mind me. I'll just be over here shaking my head at the irony of it all. CCP, this is what sovereignty in your game has become. Can we go ahead and fix that now, please?

If the tech moons were not so valuable (other moons would be spread out or most of income would be generated from renters), don't you think both TEST and PL would be interested in war against CFC? To generate more income. Then the burden of sov war would be justified.

You are not looking at it in the correct way.Currently Test and PL tech moons are in CFC space under the OTEC agreement. If HBC went full sov, they would have to push up 3-4 regions before gaining new moons that would be exclussively targeted by the CFC thus preventing the isk from flowing there. Also if you remember, they stand to lose their current moons with the possibilty of gaining a few more moons and tons of soverignty debt, opening south for reinvasion, burn outs of players (moral will be hard kept), loss of income, sov for not that much gain if they do engage in a massive sov war

Risk= HighReward=Mild to lowEvalution=DONT DO IT....saddly i do wish for the war but thatll happen when it does..nothing lasts forever

It's a bit reminiscent of the conflicts in the second Deus Ex game, actually. Two of the most powerful power blocs were supposedly at each other's throats ... except that their two leaders were literally in bed together. (And on a smaller scale, there were the two coffee chains engaged in cutthroat competition ... except that they happened to be owned by the same conglomerate, and their employees didn't know it.)

And did you ever stumble on the old theory that the three power blocs in Nineteen Eighty-Four (Oceania, Eurasia, Eastasia) were all in on the game, just trying to keep the proles distracted?

This is where your leaders lied to you. I'm not sure at what point anyone would believe that you would have to sov grind everything. I'm sure HBC doesn't want all the space and don't really want to take out CFC completely.

A smart military leader would find a limited objective (FA space/CFC tech moons) and go after that. At worst, you are only able to take a handful of systems/moons and use those as, gasp, a catalyst for large fights. Fights that would be, I dunno, fun and intense.

Montolio wanted fights but blinked when told that fights had to equal taking sov everywhere.

Someone needs to beat CCP over the head with today's bullshit until they realize that their preferred, marketed endgame, and the content they tout in every single interview for several years now, is gone. It's gone. There are no wars in nullsec any more. We've all run out of enemies that are either competent, willing to fight, capable to fight, or all of the above.

Well, yeah. Before, people would deal with it because they hated the other guys so much. Now, -A- is dead, BoB are long gone.. The only people left are people we want to shoot for the hell of it, and that's just not motivation enough. They need to make the actual sov wars fun in themselves. Somehow. I wish I knew how, but hey, if I knew I guess I'd be a game designer.

You have to understand that this would be a new Great War. It would be a war of extermination. This would not be just a stomp this "publord" and take his space, this would be Test/CFC has lost their rights to hold Sov.

Rhavas... +1 and we have several GSC's full of popcorn for just such occasions... =]

wartzilla... Probing, when done with the right skills and player experience can be much quicker than you seem to know and mass closing... again, when done with the right skills, ships n fits and player experience can be far easier than you can obviously imagine...

So careful there boyo... typing in some cases just lets everyone see how little you know.

Null, for us in holes, is something we read about in the funny papers... =]

Wars start with irrational emotions; but are justified with economics and other quantifiable terms (anti-communism/weapons of mass dest/etc).Sov grinding does sucks, but so does setting up logistics in real war. It is far from glamorous or exciting, but is just necessary. But like anything Sov grinding can be modified in scope and depth depending on your objectives. It’s a total cop out if you ask me; and stinks like the ending of a political scheme.Eve needs a good null-sec war. It will help draw new lines between reds/blues & neuts, rekindle a slow economy, and give 70% of the null sec community exactly what they want…targets to shoot.

That would require making their own content, which is precisely why they are in CFC/HBC; so others can make it for them.

What you have to be impressed by is they why these guys manipulate adults into believing this stuff about it's only the sov that is stopping them since both groups are only really know for being masters at sov warfare.

Jester: "Don't mind me. I'll just be over here shaking my head at the irony of it all. CCP, this is what sovereignty in your game has become. Can we go ahead and fix that now, please?"

This right here is the meta-meta that is being missed.

This whole "almost-war" was contrived to show CCP that sov-war mechanics suck by attempting to show that it is the mechanics that are preventing war in the first place. It's Mittens' way of influencing CCP's direction even after being deposed as CSM leader.

Mind you, I don't disagree that they suck. Just saying that this was nothing more than a stunt to demonstrate it.

It's a nice theory. I just don't happen to believe that. I don't think this is more complicated than Montrolio wanting a major dust-up with FA, having an excuse to have one, and being out-voted by his allies.

Mittens would remind us that successful organizations in EVE are dictatorships, not democracies.

I was really excited about your CSM run, but I will now be unable to vote for you. You swallowed this sov-grind BS so quickly that it's really quite startling. It's very clear that the CFC faced an actual threat for the first time in years and, using isk/tech/money/whatevs, convinced people close to Montolio to convince him to back down.

I'm a carebear and know nothing of null-sec politics.But from what I see, it seems that people who have worked extremely hard to gain power,do not like losing it.I think it comes down to the leaders having to much to lose personally,be it isk,ego,greed,a web site named after you,whatever...

All I know is that null-seccer's no longer have the moral latitude(if they ever really did) to talk down to carebears anymore,and you guys have your own leadership to thank for that....I mean come on"Peace in our Time"....This is EVE........HAHAHAHAHA

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